FRENCH LICK, IN. – Learning about wine means spending time in the vineyard. The next best thing is talking with the men and women worrying about rainfall, leaf canopy, and sugars in hot August fields.

The Indiana Uplands, nine southern Indiana wineries in the state’s only AVA, held its annual Uncork the Uplands tasting event the last weekend in July at the fabulous French Lick Springs Hotel. Muck like plants, flowers or an herb garden in many Hoosier backyards, the 2016 growing season has been a strong one.

“This year everything is growing, growing, and growing,” said Bernie Parker, vineyard manager for the 55-acre Creekbend Vineyard of Oliver Winery. “We’ve been applying some fungicides because of the wet weather. We’ve had more than eight inches of rain in July and we normally have half that.

“We have a great crop out there and as long as it dries out in next five to six weeks, we’re going to be harvesting a great vintage and full crop.”

Traminette being delivered to Huber winery in 2014. The whites come first.

That’s really good news for the Oliver operation. Late frost cut the 2014 Creekbend crop by 70 percent and the 2015 crop by about 30 percent.

The story is very similar regardless of vineyard size. John Doty, owner of French Lick Winery, said the 2016 crop is going to be excellent. “We’ve had plenty of rain but it can rain another couple of weeks. Then it needs to quit raining; if it quits raining last two weeks of August and first of September I’ll be a happy man. We have a beautiful crop hanging.”

Doty’s 8-acre vineyard is actually in Martin County on family property on the hillside of one of the highest points in the area. The vineyard suffered some trunk damage to Chambourcin vines and lost a planting of Tannat over the past two years with the early chill but 2016 appears to be delivering a stellar crop.

Butler Winery also benefit from location during bad weather years. Butler sits atop a hill just north of Bloomington. Jim Butler said his 6 acre vineyard is better suited to withstand a late frost because of its elevated position.

“We have a great crop,” the veteran Hoosier winemaker said. “We’ve had a lot of rain, but if it dries out, and that’s what we look for in August and September, we’re in great shape.”

Times have been good in recent years for most Hoosier wineries despite the two years of frost damage in a few areas. Wine sales across the country continue to rise and Indiana wine quality continues to improve.

Winemakers across the state are now at a point where they’re ready to push the envelope and try new grapes. Butler is experimenting with the cold-climate Marquette. Doty and others are planting the hardy Norton grape. Ted Huber, in the state’s southern-most region, continues his work with traditional Bordeaux-style varietals.

A warm and dry late summer will apparently deliver one of the best crops of recent vintages for Hoosier wine drinkers.

Indiana’s corn and soybean crops have sustained $475 million in rain and flood damage this summer according to Purdue University agriculture economists. Indiana’s grape crop and vineyards haven’t escaped the soggy summer woes either.

The rains have hurt vineyards most in Central Indiana while southern vines have been spared. “All the rain this year has made it especially difficult to control diseases,” said Bruce Bordelon, Purdue Professor of Horticulture and specialist in commercial grape and wine production. He said many vineyards avoided disease problems thanks to a dry month of May.

Purdue’s Bruce Bordelon

“But, I’ve seen a tremendous amount of anthracnose (leaf spots and blotches) and black rot. Shocking to see it so bad,” Bordelon said. “In some cases, it is due to a poor spray program, but in others, it is due to high disease pressure. We’ve had too many rains too close together to maintain adequate fungicide coverage.”

Purdue’s grape expert said many of the problems could still be overcome with the most critical weeks of veraison (grape ripening) still ahead.

Don Pampel, owner of Whyte Horse Winery near Monticello, owns one of those vineyards impacted by the downpours. “The heavy rainfall has made some of our vineyards extremely wet and holding water in the rows for extended period of time,” he said. “This has caused stress on the vines and depleted some of the nutrients that they depend on and we are having to spray nutrients where we have not had to in the past. The frequency of the rain has caused challenges to keep the vines protected from fungus that the rain spreads.

“We will not know the damage until it gets closer to harvest and then it is too late.”

Oliver’s Parker

A big challenge with the heavy rainfall is vineyard management. There is the obvious cost of additional spraying and loss of crop but fighting the rainfall’s effect increases labor cost. Bernie Parker, Vineyard Manager for Oliver Winery, said his crews have tried to stay ahead of the heavy rainfall by working the vines.

“Mildews have been a problem but we have had a lot more midseason growth that requires more manpower to manage,” Parker said. “We are shoot positioning and leaf pulling to open the canopy. This allows for good air flow which helps with drying the clusters and canopy, also reducing the mildew problems.”

Oliver’s Creekbend Vineyard, just north of Bloomington, is on glently rolling slopes allowing excess rainfall to run off preventing flooding. But Parker notes the heavy rains cause a proliferation of weeds to be pulled.

Creekbend was one of many Indiana vineyards to take a hit in 2014 and 2013 from extremely cold winter and spring weather. But Bordelon noted new vines and retrained vines should be benefiting from the additional moisture. Parker agreed that his re-trained vines were looking strong.

Jim Butler

The rainfall’s impact lessens in the south. At Butler Vineyards, not far from Oliver, things are looking pretty good. “If we get drier weather starting around the first of August we will have a good year,” Jim Butler said. “We have a large crop set on the vines. We have run a tight spray schedule, by that I mean timely sprays of the right materials to prevent the start of fungal infections.”

Butler said normal August weather should deliver a strong crop despite all of the early rains. Rains have been mostly normal in the Ohio River Valley region.

”In Southern Indiana we have been very lucky in missing all of the large rain events and as a result we have remained very disease free,” said Ted Huber, Huber Orchard and Winery. “Vine growth has been very good plus we continue to remain warmer and sunnier than other parts of the state.

“Therefore, many of our varieties are already in veraison and picking up sugars quickly. We estimate that our harvest will being on August 15.”

Huber has the state’s largest vineyard with more than 20 varietals planted. Just down the road at Turtle Run Winery owner Jim Pfeiffer said the rainfall had not caused any problems for his vines.

Bordelon said the heavy rain and resulting challenges means some Central Indiana vineyards are likely to see a reduced harvest. A sunny and warm month of August could boost the crop as ripening gets underway.

When most Hoosiers think of weather problems and crops it’s cornfields that come to mind. But the winter cold is the big issue of 2014 for farmers of a different type – vineyard managers.

The frigid cold of early 2014 damaged up to 25 percent of the state’s grape crop, according to Purdue’s Bruce Bordelon. “It’s very widespread in the northern part of the state,” he said. “From the Bloomington/Columbus line and north the damage is pretty severe.”

The extreme cold temperatures damaged the vine structure in many vineyards. “So a lot of us are retraining vines from the ground up,” Bordelon explained. What that means to those with the cold weather issues is that sections of the vineyard restarted may be out of production for two years. “We’ll have a light crop next year,” Bordelon said. “There should be a partial crop in two years then back to full production in 2017.”

Oliver’s Parker

One of the hardest hit vineyards was the state’s second largest at Oliver Winery. The Creekbend Vineyard just west of Oliver’s tasting room on Hwy. 37 suffered damage to 20-25 percent of its vines, according to vineyard manager Bernie Parker. “We’ll be making less than half of the Creekbend (label) but Creekbend is only about three percent of our total production. There is an economic impact because we’re still having to put in the same effort in the vineyard to re-grow these vines. It may take more effort.”

Parker had to restart 9,000 of 36,000 vines in the 54 acre vineyard. The largest portion of the Oliver wines though are produced from grapes purchased to produce their signature and popular sweet wines. The higher-end Creekbend wines are grown in their vineyard. The bulk of that vineyard is planted in Chambourcin, Traminette, Vignoles, Chardonel, and other typical Indiana wine grapes.

Others who suffered damage may have been able to recover a crop with good vineyard practices. “Grapes are an amazing plant in their ability to produce fruit,” Bordelon said. “We always adjust the production through pruning and cluster thinning. We usually have way more fruit than we really need. With some of these (grape) varieties, with lighter pruning, we’ll still be able to have close to a full crop.”

Down south Ted Huber saw little damage in his vineyards atop the Ohio River Valley hilltops. We’re probably going to pull off an 85-90 percent grape crop,” Huber said. We had a little bit of minor damage in one vineyard so by choice we decided to do a renewal on it. It still had one-third to a half crop on it anyway, but it just made a lot of sense to take it out of production.”

Huber has the state’s largest vineyard but is the second biggest wine producer. Oliver is by far the state’s biggest wine producer with the second largest vineyard. Oliver buys the fruit for much of its 300,000 case production. Approximately half of the Oliver total production is the popular sweet wines.

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